


hangman

by whatweowetoeachother



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anyways, Dream Smp, Gen, Post-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Sleepy Boys Inc - Freeform, Suicide, idk - Freeform, set after tommyinnit's exile, sleepy bois inc - Freeform, tommyinnit goes insane :D, wait do you tag it as canon divergence if you dont know how canon is gonna go yet, well technically since they have multiple lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:01:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27903400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatweowetoeachother/pseuds/whatweowetoeachother
Summary: “A game, big man,” he repeats.  “The game is,  you have to guess why I kidnapped you. Other than for the discs, of course.” Tubbo has a terrible feeling, something sinking in his chest. “Guess right, and I’ll let you go.”“And if I’m wrong?”Tommy shrugs. “That will be a life lost.”in which Tommy goes insane and kidnaps Tubbo to play a game (of sorts) with himmature rating is for suicide!! no shipping
Relationships: Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot
Comments: 9
Kudos: 118





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> basically in this both Tommy and Tubbo have 2 lives left for plot purposes. 
> 
> pls enjoy :)

Tubbo wakes to pitch-black blankness and an aching head. It is an immediate disorientation, so he blinks a few times, waiting for his eyes to adjust. There is water dripping from somewhere, and the sound of it echoes around the—room? It echoes in his head. The surface he lies on is hard, and cold.

Slowly, he drags himself upright. The stone he now sits on is incredibly porous, and mostly dry, except for where he’d previously laid his head. It is slick with something a shade darker than the stone, too dark and visibly formed to just be shadow. Tubbo reaches a hand to the back of his head, touching it gingerly. It comes away sticky with blood. He grimaces, and looks away. 

In front of him is another sight—solid lines crossing from the ceiling to the floor, far enough from him that it is hazy in the darkness, and close enough that he can still recognise them as bars. Down at the middle of the lines, slightly left from dead center, is a padlock.

Tubbo’s mind wakes up with the rest of him, fogginess dissipating as he starts to panic. He’s been knocked out, placed inside a cell, and the cell’s been locked. 

Before he can start to sort out the increasingly frantic buzzing that is his worry, a silhouette appears right behind the bars. The other side of the bars. He’s the one trapped inside. The silhouette is Tommy.

Oh.

Tommy?

The silhouette is Tommy. 

“Tommy?” He croaks, voice hoarse from thirst. It’s filtered in with the rest of the muted worrying at the back of his head, how long he’s been unconscious that he hasn't drunk any water for so long. He struggles to a standing position, leaning against the wall for support.

“Tubbo! You’re awake!” It is as loud, as excited, that the familiarity eases his panic by a margin, even if it makes his head throb worse.

“Where are we?”

Tommy makes a vague gesture. “Somewhere outside of L’Manberg. You know, the-the general area.”

“No, I don’t.” Tubbo frowns. “What do you mean- where are we?!”

“Well, I can’t just _tell_ you that.” 

“What- why not?” The panic is rising again. They had to be outside of L’Manberg, because Dream would have Tommy killed the moment he stepped foot in, Tubbo shoves down the guilt that has become a constant, so how did they both get here, and why isn’t Tommy helping him?

“You’re, um, well. My hostage.” 

“Tommy-” 

“I’m not hostaging you for anything, I wouldn’t do that, big man! I just… may have a few questions.”

Dread curls up in the remaining areas of Tubbo’s body that have not yet been touched by the panic. They coexist, that he almost thinks he’s becoming to be made of it and only that. 

“What kind of questions?”

“I know what you know I’m asking for, Tubbo. Where are my discs?” He shifts closer to the bars, close enough for Tubbo to make out his individual features. His face is gaunt, complete with the eyebags and hollowed out cheeks. Tubbo hasn’t seen Tommy like this, not since Pogtopia. The guilt finds a space in between the dread and panic. Still, he can’t answer. They’ve both made clear, which sides they’re on. 

“I don’t know.” 

In a sudden motion, Tommy moves to grip the bars with both his hands, rattling them. It echoes. “Of course you do, you’ve had them moved from your old chest, and you’ve never let anyone in there before except for me, Tubbo, so _where are they?_ ”

He flinches back. “I don’t- I don’t know.”

Tommy glares at him. There’s a strange light in his eyes, not foreign, but familiar in a way that being struck by lightning would be reminiscent of an electric shock. The terror he feels is multiplying tenfold. He’s never seen Tommy look like that, ever, not even when against Dream, or Schlatt. “Tommy-”

“Shut up.”

Tubbo falls silent, mind racing. What happened to him?

“Alright, fine, then.” Tommy says, after enough silence that the water dripping is apparent again. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“Well, that’s good-”

“So why don’t we play a game?”

“What?”

“A game, big man,” he repeats. “The game is, you have to guess why I kidnapped you. Other than for the discs, of course.” Tubbo has a terrible feeling, something sinking in his chest. “Guess right, and I’ll let you go.” 

“And if I’m wrong?”

Tommy shrugs. “That will be a life lost.”

The sinking feeling in his chest is that, the last time he’d seen that light in anyone’s eyes it had been Wilbur’s. Right at the end.

“Tommy, you’ve gone insane.”

His eyes flash, and the mad lightning crackles. His lips twist into a scowl. “No, I haven’t!”

“No, look at yourself, you’re just like-”

“ I’m nothing like Wilbur!” Tommy spits.

“No, you’re _exactly_ like him, just listen-”

“Shut up, Tubbo, or that will be your first life!”

Tubbo shuts up. He is furious, and at the same time very, very afraid. 

“Make your first guess, Tubbo.”

“Do I get a say in this?” He asks weakly. 

Tommy lets out one of his explosive laughs. And it is so much worse, how he looks now while doing it, the madness superimposing itself onto all of Tubbo’s memories of him laughing. “Do you get a- no, of course not!”

“Alright then.”

He only has two lives left. Two tries. 

Tommy starts pacing in front of his cell. Tubbo pulls at the threads of his shirt. The dripping in the background is a clock, rhythmic, a countdown. He has to be honest, now. That’s what Tommy wants. 

“Because I-” He stops. “Because I exiled you, my best friend, after we agreed that it would only ever be- us against them.” 

Tommy halts in his pacing, says to the cracked wall in front of him: “Wrong.”

What?

“No, Tommy, why else would I be here?”

What else is there?

Tommy turns to face him. A cruel glance.

“Shouldn’t you be the one telling me that, Big Law?”

Slowly, he draws his sword from the sheath. 

“No, Tommy, please,” Tubbo is abruptly reminded of his execution, Techno standing over him, fireworks exploding into- Will all his deaths be at the hands of his brothers, then? Did Wilbur miss one, did he escape it, when he escaped the explosion? “You can’t do this, you don’t have to do this.” 

“No, but I think I want to, Tubbo.” The sword makes a swishing sound in the darkness.

He has a sudden thought, to make a mad dash for freedom when Tommy unlocks the cell. His only chance. He tenses up, ready to run. 

But Tommy doesn’t open the door. Instead, the sword has already swung upwards while the plan had been in formulation, and Tubbo has a moment of _oh, is the sword really that long,_ before he sees it moving upwards to Tommy throat and he’s lunging forward and shouting—

Blood, darker than red in the absence of light, spills from Tommy’s throat and splatters on the floor, the ugliest painting he has ever seen.

Tommy’s body collapses beside it. 

Tubbo is frozen, mid-lunge and mid-shout, mid-panic and halfway to shock. His hand reaches to grip the bars, before he slowly falls down beside Tommy’s body. It is disappearing already. 

He’d just-

A life, Tommy had said. He hadn’t whose life it would be. 

Tommy had had two lives left, too, one from the duel. And now one from this. He’d slit his own throat in front of him, because Tubbo had given him the wrong answer. 

A life, he thinks numbly, for every mistake he’s made.

The blood is already drying up. 

Tubbo backs away from the cell bars, back to the stone he’d been sitting on. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i would like to say i called it. i called suicidal!tommy like two days before it happened. i am cleopatra, both in the sense that my predictions have come true and also that not many people have seen them. to know everything and have no one is a lonely fate i bear.

Tommy doesn’t come back that night. And he only knows it’s night because of the nearby hissing sounds of mobs, and he only knows Tommy is near because of the twanging of bows from the skeletons. He doesn't think Tommy would've let anyone else in on the plan, or let him be held captive too near any of the cities. His best guess is that he's somewhere in Logstedshire, that barren island he'd visited once in search of him.

He’s getting his wish, now. 

It is cold where he lies, the stone cold and the bars even colder when he’d tried to find some way to get out. Tubbo’s panicking, has been panicking for the last few hours. He knows he’ll be back, and he’ll have to watch the blue in Tommy’s eyes again, he’ll have to watch it contrasted against the red, he’ll see how the gray doesn’t go as well with it. He already has. 

He has one life left. Tubbo can’t get out. 

And even if he could—what would Tommy do then?

The guilt thrums in his bones, and somewhere below his stomach, and somewhere in his hands, in the blood that had stained itself into his skin when he’d grabbed the bars beside the corpse of the boy he had condemned. There is not much he can do, not when he’s searched every crevice of the cell for the smallest draft of wind, and smudged the blood on his hands everywhere. 

Then there’s a rustle.

Tubbo sits up with a jerk, heart pounding. He’s not ready, he doesn’t have an answer, oh God, if Tommy comes back—

“Hello? Tommy?”

A broken voice. Familiar, from before it was broken. 

He rushes towards the bars, grabs onto them and tries to squint as far out into the darkness as he can. “Wilbur! Wilbur, is that you?”

A man in a yellow sweater emerges. 

“Tubbo?”

“Wilbur- Wilbur, you have to get me out, please, before Tommy comes back.”

“Tubbo- what are you doing here?” Wilbur floats through the bars. It is futile, but Tubbo tries to reach for him anyways. There is no drop in temperature, or increase in warmth, when his hand goes through Wilbur’s shoulder, but he’s here, at least.

“Tommy captured me. You have to get me out, Wil, he killed himself, he-” he is dangerously close to crying, Wilbur is so near, and something still tells him he’s safe whenever he sees him, despite everything, despite the madness, and the cold, and the red in his shirt. “I can’t-”

“It’s alright, Tubbo.” A ghost tries to hug him. “It’s alright, calm down. Tell me what happened.”

He leans into the hug anyways, tries to trick himself into hope. “Tommy, he brought me here, and he had a- a game, he said he’d take a life if I lost, and I lost and he- I can’t—He’s gone mad, Wilbur.”

_Just like you did, _runs through the back of his head, but it is much worse because Wilbur had blown up his love and made their father kill him and Tommy is making Tubbo watch him kill himself and his blood is still on his hands. This time it is his fault.__

____

____

Wilbur pauses, thinking. Tubbo wonders if he’d known how bad it’d gotten, with the lack of surprise on his face, the lack of horror at his own little brother. 

“Tubbo… I’ll go get help, okay?” 

Panic seizes him briefly. He’ll be alone again, and Tommy will be back, but Wilbur can’t do anything as a ghost and if he gets help they might be able to stop Tommy in time. The logical, rational thing to do. Where had that gotten him the previous time. Still, he nods, and chokes down the panic.

Wilbur smiles worriedly, brushing a hand through Tubbo’s shoulder. “I’ll be back soon.”

He floats out through the wall, with Tubbo standing there, helpless. 

In the distance, there is the sound of a creeper exploding. He wonders if Tommy's dodged it. He wonders if he’s dodged it only so he could make him watch, when morning came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do u ever just try so hard to make sure youre properly characterizing them that you just do it too hard and know it seems like a mockery. 
> 
> anyways pls criticisms are welcome and also any form of validation.
> 
> thanks for reading!! ily

**Author's Note:**

> lol ik it's kinda dialogue heavy and at the same time the pacings shit but it'll be better next chapter i hope  
> 
> 
> criticisms/comments are welcome!


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